Susan Powter Recalls Squirting Her Breast Milk at a Man in a Restaurant After He Criticized Her for Breastfeeding in Public

NEED TO KNOW

• Susan Powter recalled an incident with a man in her ex-husband’s restaurant

• The Stop the Insanity author told Entertainment Weekly she squirted her breast milk at a man eating a steak after his comments about her breastfeeding in public

• Powter is a mother to sons Gabriel, Kiel and Damien

Susan Powter is recalling a tense interaction with a patron in her ex-husband’s restaurant.

The Stop the Insanity author, 67, recently chatted with Entertainment Weekly about her life before fame, when she was living in Dallas with ex Nic Villarreal and raising her kids. Powter recalled a moment where she squirted her breast milk at a patron in her ex’s restaurant following his comments about her breastfeeding in public.

“I was on the patio, covering with a cotton diaper,” Powter recalled. “I was being very respectful. A man eating a steak, he was cutting a steak, and turned and said, ‘That’s disgusting. Go to the bathroom and do that.'”

Powter told the outlet that she turned toward him and clapped back.

“[I said] ‘You go to the toilet,’ and I squirted breast milk at him in my husband’s restaurant,” Powter said. “Nobody supported me, so I squirted breast milk at him and his stupid steak.”

Powter lost her fitness empire, which once sold $50 million in products annually, after a series of bad business deals left her bankrupt. Last year, in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, she said she had been struggling for years.

“I’ve known desperation,” Powter told PEOPLE while living in a low-income senior community where a local charity handed out free meals twice a week. “Desperation is walking back from the welfare office. It’s the shock of, ‘From there, now I’m here? How in God’s name?’”

In the early ’90s, Powter was a cultural icon, with her thundering voice and frenetic vibe. She was spoofed by Saturday Night Live — and landed on People’s list of “Most Intriguing People” in 1993.

Legions of fans shelled out $79.80 for her Stop the Insanity! program of recipes, workout tips and motivational audio cassettes — and they made Powter a best-selling author three times over. They were drawn by Powter’s personal story: A 260-lb. Texas homemaker with two kids whose husband leaves her for another woman gets revenge by getting fit. Coupling that with her take-down of the diet industry and her “fat makes you fat” message, she seemed unstoppable.

But Powter realized too late that she’d made a raw deal with her business partners, and by 1995, she declared bankruptcy. “There was nothing but lawsuits in the ‘90s,” she said. Slowly, the remaining money disappeared.

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Last November, she met filmmaker Zeberiah Newman, who proposed the new documentary, Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter, which was backed by Jamie Lee Curtis. The response to the film and to her story has been “very heartwarming,” Powter told PEOPLE.

Curtis told PEOPLE she’s rooting for Powter, who also wrote a memoir about her journey. “Like so many women’s stories, Susan’s power and her light was diminished, denigrated and dismissed,” said Curtis. “Watching her fight for her rights and start to build back her life is also as much about the American dream as her success was.”

Powter told Today that she was “broken” when Newman first approached her with the documentary idea, but she hopes this marks a fresh start for her: “I want to be able to do what I did once before – which was miraculous – and this time it will be properly managed. I want to have a chance.”

Read the original article on People